India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce Expands to B2B Transactions

India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has begun facilitating B2B transactions.

The government-backed eCommerce network started testing the B2B expansion in May after beginning to handle transactions between consumers and businesses with a beta version in September 2022, TechCrunch reported Monday (June 5).

ONDC did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

“One of the biggest challenges in digital commerce is, even if you help enterprises to digitize, how do we help them to reach across the market?” ONDC CEO and Managing Director T Koshy said at the time of the launch of the testing, according to the report. “Each of them has to have a separate buying application or a portal they use to call. So now, we are trying to create a standard, which will make all these things a big possibility.”

Two startups — business automation platform Rapidor and subscription-as-a-service payments startup SignCatch — participated in the B2B test and conducted about 160 transactions on the network, the report said.

The two companies will also conduct B2B transactions on the network now that it launched the new expansion Monday, per the report.

On the consumer transactions side, ONDC is now facilitating about 50,000 transactions per day, and Koshy expects that to rise to 100,000 transactions per day within months, according to the report.

The ONDC network enables buyers and sellers to connect and transact with one another regardless of app, with particular emphasis on small merchants and rural customers.

The rollout of the platform came after India’s antitrust body raided domestic sellers of Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart after accusations of violations of competition law. It aims to combat the dominance of U.S. companies.

Payments platform PhonePe launched an eCommerce app built on the ONDC network on April 4, saying the new Pincode app will start in Bengaluru and soon expand to other cities.

“Pincode is built on the ONDC network, which allows us to generate demand for merchants digitized by various seller platforms in an inclusive manner, while creating new opportunities for growth and driving innovation at scale,” PhonePe CEO and founder Sameer Nigam said at the time of the launch.